Neo-traditional tattoos of a snarling grey wolf head and a snarling black bear head, side by side on the upper arms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wolf and bear heads on two arms

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

Two snarling animal heads are shown side by side: a grey wolf on the left and a black bear on the right, both with bared teeth and open mouths. The bold black outlines, flat fills and soft grey and tan shading are typical of neo-traditional work, with a pink tongue and warm tan accents adding colour. Each head sits centrally on its arm against a plain dark background.

Neo-trad Upper arm Wolf Bear Animal head Snarl Fangs

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The grey wolf and the black bear had been at the stile since the first frost, and by the time I came up the lane with the milk pail, both of them stood either side of the gate with their heads low and their lips peeled back over their teeth. Nobody in Thornhead had ever seen the pair of them agree on anything. Mother said they were two halves of one bad temper that had split at the ford.

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I should have walked round. Instead I set the pail down in the nettles and asked what the quarrel was. The wolf answered first, with a growl that rattled the latch. A ewe had gone missing from Haddon's top field, and each of them swore the other had carried her off. The bear said wolves always leave a mess. The wolf said bears were too slow to catch a cold, let alone a sheep.

I found the ewe that evening. She was not in the wood at all but in the loft above Haddon's barn, asleep in the hay with a lamb tucked under her, where she had been driven when someone left the byre door open. I carried the news to the stile at dusk. They were still there, two shapes in the blue dark, and neither would look at me until I held up the lamb.

The wolf went quiet first. Then the bear laughed, a low rumble that came up through the ground, and the wolf's jaw slackened into something close to a grin. They walked off down the lane together, shouldering each other like drunk men, teeth still bared at every turn. I think of them whenever I pass the stile. Some quarrels are only worth keeping for the look of the thing.